VarisDev is built on top of the open-source coding harness Pi, adding a desktop GUI, some tools and a data visualization layer. Its designed to be as minimal as possible and does not pollute your prompts with anything or enforce any particular workflows. Its functions should be very familiar to anyone who has used Pi.
Pi is a very cool project and VarisDev would not have been possible without it. Check it out here.
- Parent sessions and background agents with a cool 3D-view reminiscent of late 90s management games.
- Makes you look like you are not working when in fact you are!
- Robots drinking coffee!
- Detailed visualizations regarding whatever the agents are doing and token usage.
- Context files, Markdown editing, and image previews.
- Loads Pi packages and extension commands. Visual Pi plugins probably dont do much as VarisDev has its own UI. So beware!
- Has its own theming system that you can extend as you wish.
- Additional tools for browsing, structured data, and images.
Install this first — Node.js 24 or newer is required.
macOS / Linux
curl -fsSL https://joonas.ninja/varisdev/install.sh | sh
Windows (PowerShell)
irm https://joonas.ninja/varisdev/install.ps1 | iex
Windows (Command Prompt)
curl -fsSLo install.cmd https://joonas.ninja/varisdev/install.cmd && install.cmd
Open a new terminal and run varisdev. On Windows, you can also open VarisDev from the Start menu. On macOS, the installer adds VarisDev to ~/Applications.
See installation options and uninstall instructions.
Use Updates → Check for updates in the app, or run varisdev update.
Since VarisDev uses Pi under the hood many of the things you see in VarisDev work exactly like in Pi. See Pi's documentation.
VarisDev is open source under the MIT License. Copyright © 2026 Joonas Nousiainen.
Pi and other third-party components retain their respective licenses and copyright notices. Pi's original MIT license, including Mario Zechner's copyright notice, is preserved in licenses/pi-MIT.txt. See third-party notices.